


Sitting Shiva

by Morgana



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-01-01
Updated: 2009-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-05 18:28:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgana/pseuds/Morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Willow helps Angel mourn his childe</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Angel closed the door behind the last of the girls and turned to go back downstairs. One more person to see settled before he could retreat to the peace and quiet of his room. He was already eagerly anticipating some quality time with John Donne, a glass of wine, and Boccherini's _La Musica Nocturne Della Strada_ when a crisply accented voice called his name.

"Can I get you anything, Giles?"

"Actually, I needed to have a word with you, if you have a moment."

It looked like relaxing would have to wait. He sighed. "Sure. Just a second, okay?" He went to the top of the stairs and called down. "Fred?"

"Yes, Angel?"

"Could you set up the basement? Use my spare comforter and pillow and make sure there's at least four bags- human, not pig. Oh, and leave whatever we've got left from the first aid kit, too."

She nodded and turned to go before stopping and looking back up at him, clearly puzzled. "Sure thing. Are we gonna have more company?"

"Just one more. His name's Spike and he looks like a-"

"Real badass punk but he's a total sweetheart when you get to know him?"

"Yeah, that's him. Looks like he's already made himself at home. Tell him I'll be down in a bit- I've just gotta talk to Giles first, okay?"

"But... I mean, Buffy said-"

"I don't care what Buffy said. He's staying in the basement." Angel's tone made it clear that this was an absolute. Spike might be 'in her heart', but if he wanted to be in her bed, they'd have to find someplace besides his hotel for that.

Fred opened her mouth again, but before she could say anything, Giles' voice cut into the conversation. "Angel, Spike's actually what I needed to speak to you about."

"Why, what'd he do now? You do realize that just because I created the little shit it doesn't mean I'm responsible for him anymore, right? I mean, I didn't even have a soul then, so I don't know why everyone-"

"He's dead."

The quiet words pulled him up short and he looked at Giles with blank, uncomprehending eyes. "I'm- What?"

"Spike's dead." Angel shook his head slowly, mouth opening and closing as he tried to force the words in his throat out. Giles took his glasses off, polishing them as he spoke in clear, concise tones. "The amulet you brought turned out to be a very strong magical artifact. It closed the Hellmouth by harnessing the power and purity of sunlight."

Sunlight? But what would sunlight have had to do with Spike dying? Surely there was enough time for him to get- oh. "He wore it." Angel's voice was flat, the words dragging at him like lead weights.

"Yes."

Angel turned away, his hands blindly closing around the banister, squeezing it until he heard wood crack. Tears blurred his vision before he blinked them back. Not here, can't break down here, had to wait until he got somewhere safe for that. He cleared his throat, always aware of the keen gaze that watched him like he was some rare specimen in a butterfly collection. When he could take it no longer, he demanded, "Why you?"

"Excuse me?"

"Why you? Why did they ask you to tell me? I mean, you don't even like me!"

Giles looked down at the carpet, then at the vampire. Should he tell him the truth, that no one else had been willing to speak the words that made it a reality or witness the gleeful triumph they'd all been expecting? They had obviously been mistaken as to the way the news would be received, but he still wasn't sure exactly what it meant. He settled on a partial truth. "We- that is, I thought you should know. It's still too... recent for any of the children to deal with."

Angel nodded and turned away without saying anything else. He walked back down the hallway towards his room, moving with the slow, purposeful gait of someone who has just received a heavy blow. The doorknob rattled when he closed his hand around it and it was with some surprise that he noticed it was his own hand doing the shaking. He clenched his hand and waited for the tremor to stop before he shut the door, moving about his routine as though on autopilot. He poured a glass of wine, put the music on and took the glass to his chair, but he didn't reach for the book on the side table.

Fred's sweet voice called his name through the door, and it was surprisingly difficult to answer her. He just couldn't seem to stop hearing those words: _"Spike's dead."_ It didn't seem like it could be true, felt like it had to be one of those sneaky little Watcher tricks to find out more about vampires, or maybe a practical joke in the worst taste imaginable.

"Angel? Mr. Giles told me about your... about Spike. I'm really sorry."

Don't be sorry, he wanted to say, but found himself nodding dumbly instead. She looked like she wanted to say more, and he patted her on the shoulder, then sent her to bed as well. He would've sent her to the edges of the earth if it would've kept her from trying to offer a comfort that he neither wanted nor deserved. After she left, he stared into the darkness of the room and waited for the grief to hit him. But nothing came.

The morning brought with it a host of new problems and tasks. There was packing to do for the move to Wolfram &amp; Hart, families to contact for the new Slayers and those that had fallen in the battle, arguments with Giles over their decision to take over the law firm, and memorial service arrangements for Anya and the Slayers. Angel refused to have one for Spike, and that set off a whole new set of fights, first with Dawn and then with Buffy.

It was only natural, he supposed. They were human, and it was the human thing to do to have a ceremony that allowed you to mourn your loss. Part of the grieving and healing process, a way to remember before you moved on. But he wasn't human, and no ceremony could begin to capture what he'd lost. Happy memories wouldn't help ease the ache inside where his childe used to be... especially since he'd stopped feeling that ache years ago. He had no words for any of it, and he resented their desire to name their loss because once they named it, they could move past it. Move past Spike. So he shoved the question aside and went through his days like he always did.

But over the next few nights, Angel was visited at least once by each Scooby. They came to him one by one, slipping silently into the room. None of them said much, seeming primarily to want simply to stand in his doorway and look at him. Was this how it had been for Spike? Had they come to him in the night after Buffy died? Were they his solace in that little hovel of a crypt, these brave and beautiful children with their eyes too large and knowing in their pale faces? He hoped so.

He could find no comfort in them, though, and knew he wasn't what they were looking for, either. He wasn't Andrew's larger than life hero or Xander's pool buddy or Giles' countryman. He wasn't Dawn's protector and big brother or Buffy's confidant- the workings of her mind had always been foreign to him, and he knew she'd seen him as an impenetrable maze. But they came anyway, looking to him as though he could somehow magically fill those holes.

Angel wanted to rail at them, to scream out that he wasn't Spike and never would be. Did they think they could simply get another pet vampire and everything would be all right? Was that all Spike had been to them? An extra set of shoulders to cry on or extra muscle on patrol? Had they really known him so little that they didn't realize his boy was one of a kind?

He knew that wasn't fair, though. Everything about them said that they were feeling the loss of the feisty blond deeply, from the shadows under reddened eyes to the careful way they moved and spoke, as though anything too sudden would tear them all apart. Or maybe that was just him. God knows he felt fragile enough, like he might fly apart at the slightest thing or shatter at the briefest word. It wasn't a new feeling, but one that had been gathering, growing like a cancer under his skin until he wondered if it might be the only thing holding him together.

How long might things have gone on like that, with him growing ever more desperate? Would his despair have crept outwards to touch his friends, his private agony working in seething quiet to destroy their lives until they were in truth bound to Wolfram &amp; Hart as none of them wished to be? Angel would always be grateful that he'd never had to find out, not after Willow came to his room.

It had been a week since the memorial service, the night before he and his crew were set to start work at the law firm, when Willow tapped lightly on his door. She slipped inside once he called for her to do so, then walked over to sit down on the large hassock by his reading chair. “Angel? I've been thinking about something, and I'd like you to hear me out before you say anything, okay?”

He nodded, and she cleared her throat, then began what was obviously a carefully thought out speech. “I've been thinking about Spike, and how you've said you don't want a service, and that's okay. But you need to... well, to grieve, I guess is the best way to say it. You've been so busy, what with the whole taking over the evil law firm thing, and helping us and that's great, but you've lost someone, someone who meant a lot to you. And I know how that is, and it's going to eat you up inside if you can't let it out. I think... I think you should sit shiva for Spike.”

Angel gaped at her. Sit shiva? For Spike? “But I'm not Jewish,” he finally said.

She put a hand over his and squeezed gently. “You don't have to be. I mean, sure, you probably won't be reciting the kaddish, but that doesn't mean you can't sit shiva. It's not a formal ritual, after all. But the time gives you a chance to just think about the person you've lost. You can remember them, remember what they meant to you, and allow yourself to feel the pain of their loss.”

“Willow, as much as I appreciate the offer, I'm fi-”

“Don't you dare tell me you're fine,” she interrupted in a low voice, her eyes boring into his. “You aren't fine, Angel. I can see it, Buffy can see it, even _Giles_ can see it and he hasn't spent more than ten minutes around you since we got here!”

Hearing that his pain had been so obvious was almost too much. “Well, maybe all of you can seethat I want to be alone, since everybody's so goddamn perceptive all of a sudden!” Angel yanked his hand out from beneath hers and surged to his feet, stalking towards the kitchen with a growl.

“That's not fair!” Willow cried behind him. “You can't just expect everybody to know what you want when you keep trying to act like nothing's wrong, like you're glad-”

A loud snarl cut her off, and before he could stop himself, Angel advanced on her, yellow eyes glittering. “Don't. Even. Think. That. You have no idea what it's like to lose a-” A what? A friend? A lover? A childe? “To lose him,” he finished more quietly, struggling to reign his emotions in. “You can't ever know.”

“I know what it feels like to have everything you care about yanked away from you,” she countered softly. “To have your heart cut open but it keeps beating anyways. And I know how easy it is to get mad at everybody and take it out on the people you care about because if you admit how much it hurts, you-” Her voice caught and she had to clear her throat before she could speak again. “-you'll have to face the fact that they're really gone and they're never coming back.”

It was exactly what he didn't want to hear, and his throat closed up, leaving him unable to do anything besides look away. Willow placed her hand on his arm, waiting until he looked back at her before she said, “You have to face it or you'll never be able to let him go and it's going to eat you from the inside out. Angel, please... we all care about you, and everybody's worried. Would you just... think about what I suggested?”

He stared at her for a long moment, then slowly nodded. “Yeah, okay.” She smiled and gave him a little squeeze, then slipped out of the room. After she'd gone, Angel sank back down into his chair, his head spinning as he thought about what she'd suggested.

The next morning, he went down early, hoping to catch her before the day's activities began. He was in luck- she was in the kitchen, lingering over a cup of coffee after her sunrise meditation. “Okay. I'll do it.”

Willow smiled. “I'll make the arrangements,” she told him. “And Angel? For what it's worth, I think Spike would've liked knowing you cared this much about him.”

Angel knew he wouldn't have. Spike would've laughed himself stupid over the idea of a vampire performing a human mourning ritual, then called him all sorts of names for going through it, but he didn't say anything, just smiled and watched her hurry out of the room. Maybe Willow was right, and this would finally give him the peace he craved. Either way, it couldn't hurt, right?


	2. Chapter 2

Three days later, she came for him. “Angel?” He looked up from his desk, giving the redhead in the doorway a tired smile. “Angel, it's time,” she said gently. When her words met with a puzzled look, Willow sighed and elaborated. “You remember... sitting shiva for Spike?”

“Oh. Right.” He wondered if now was the time to tell her that he'd decided not to go through with it. Mourning rituals like that were for the living, a way to ease the pain of loss and help them deal with death. Seeing as how neither he nor Spike had been alive in well over a hundred years, Angel didn't see how this was supposed to help him. “Yeah, about that. Willow, I-”

She crossed her arms and gave him a hard look. “Don't even think about saying you changed your mind. Cause everything's ready and you promised and I _will_ use the resolve face if I have to.”

Angel didn't know what the hell she was talking about with the whole 'resolve face' thing, but he could tell she thought it was a pretty big threat from the way she tilted her chin up. “It's just that right now things are pretty hectic, what with moving to Wolfram &amp; Hart and everything. I really can't afford to take a whole week off- maybe later, when everything settles down.”

“And then later there's gonna be some big apocalypse or a meeting you just have to go to.” The young witch shook her head. “If you don't want to do it, then say so. But don't pretend like you really cared about him, then. And don't ever ask any of us for help again.”

“Wait. Are you- are you blackmailing me?” He couldn't quite believe it. Why would she go to these lengths over _Spike_, of all people?

She hesitated, then said slowly, “Spike told me once that it's the only way to get things done.” Willow swallowed hard and Angel was astonished to see her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “Angel, have you thought that maybe you're not the only one who needs this? We all miss him, but only close family can sit shiva. And like it or not, you're the closest thing he had to that.”

Family. Yes, they been that, and a hell of a lot more besides. The reminder settled on his chest like a thousand-pound weight, and Angel sighed. “Fine. What do I have to do?”

“Come with me.” He reached for the phone to tell Wesley where he was going, but Willow shook her head. “No phone calls, no work, no nothing. I'll explain it all to everybody, but you need to start it right now.” She walked around the desk and held her hand out to him. “Trust me, okay?”

Telling himself that Willow wouldn't lead him astray, Angel nodded. He let her take his hand and lead him out of the office, following her almost blindly. She took him straight up to his room, then stopped him just outside the door. “You need to take your shoes off.”

It was such an odd order that he couldn't quite process it. “What?”

“Your shoes.” When he stared at her in bewilderment, she sighed and explained, “Part of shiva is putting all worldly things aside so you can focus on your grief. Your shoes are a symbol of that, because they represent the face that you present to the world. By taking them off, you're leaving that outward side of yourself at the door.”

He had no idea what to say to that, so he just nodded again. “Oh, okay.” Slipping his shoes off, he lined them up neatly beside the door, then straightened up. Willow smiled and reached out towards him, and before Angel could react, she ripped one of his sleeves at the shoulder. “Hey! What the-”

“It's a visible sign of mourning,” she told him. “A way to express the magnitude of your loss.”

“Fine, but did it have to be expressed with my Hugo Boss-” He cut himself off when he caught sight of her face. “Sorry. So what do I do now?”

Willow pushed the door open and gestured for Angel to step inside. His room had been transformed into a place he barely recognized- white sheets covered both the old-fashioned full-length mirror in the corner and the smaller one over the dresser, and in place of his comfortable leather sofa, a short-legged chair had been set up with a large white pillar candle next to it and several cushions laid out in front of it. “Sit down,” Willow told him, waiting until he'd lowered himself into it before she knelt down beside him. “You sit low to the ground because your grief is too strong for you to stand. Now, Angel, you need to listen to me, because this is really important, okay?” She waited until he nodded before she continued. “For the next week, you'll stay here in your rooms. We'll take care of moving everything over to Wolfram &amp; Hart, and we'll run the agency for you as well.”

“But that's-”

“No buts.” Her raised hand cuts him off, and once he's quiet again, she tells him, “You aren't supposed to wash except for cleanliness, and while someone will bring blood up for you whenever you want it, the only thing you should be concentrating on is Spike. You need to think about him, remember who he was and what he meant to you, and really let yourself feel the pain of his death. This is a way for you to say good-bye and start letting go of some of your grief.”

Willow picked up a small silver lighter from a ledge on the candlestand, and for a second he could almost believe it was the battered, ancient Zippo that Spike had always loved. But this was too new, the sides still gleaming as she flicked it open and sparked the light. “We light the candle to remember Spike's spirit,” she said softly. “The flame dances and glows, like his life and love. We give thanks that we were blessed enough to know him, and we mourn his death in the same way that Adam and Eve mourned the loss of paradise. From dust he was created, and to dust-” her voice caught on the word, and Angel finished the familiar phrase for her, “and to dust he has returned.”

His chest felt tight just saying it, but the words brought the reality that he'd been attempting to forget slamming back into him. Dust. Spike was dust. The eager fledgling that had lived only to please him, the impish boy that had shared his bed during long, lazy days, the annoying, mouthy brat, the angry, abandoned childe, the cold, deadly killer who could still give his whole heart to a fickle, faithless female... Spike, his beautiful boy, was now nothing more than dust scattered in the dirt somewhere deep in the Hellmouth. “Oh, God,” he choked out, wrenching his eyes away from the candle to look up at the sad green ones above him. “It's-” _Real_.

The witch nodded and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You'll make it though this, Angel,” she assured him. “And trust me- this will help, even if it hurts to go through it.” She took a deep breath, then continued in her instructions. “I've already told everybody about how this works, so there shouldn't be any problems. When people come in, you don't get up to say hello, okay? They'll sit here on the floor, and you can talk to them if you want, or just sit quietly- it's up to you.”

“What if I don't want anybody there at all?”

“That's okay, too. Just tell them you'd like to be alone. This is about your mourning for Spike- not the need to socialize or be polite, so if you can't have anyone around right then, then we'll leave.” She squeezed his shoulder, then walked over to the small fridge near the bed. Angel watched in amazement as Willow prepared two mugs of blood without so much as flinching, wondering how often she'd done this for his childe to be so comfortable with it.

When the microwave beeped, she took the blood out and brought it over to him, setting one mug down on the floor and pressing the other into his hand. “_Ha-Makom y'nachem et'khem b'tokh sh'ar avelei Tziyon viyrusalayim_,” she said softly, the ancient words flowing easily off her tongue.

He thought about asking her what it meant, then decided it didn't really matter, and took a drink instead. Willow took a seat on one of the cushions on the floor, and the two of them sat in silence, the vampire slowly finishing his blood while the witch watched him quietly. After he'd finished, he started to push his demon back, knowing how uncomfortable the yellow eyes and facial ridges made humans, but then she stated, “You don't have to if you don't want to.”

She knew about the desire to bask in the feed? Angel gaped at her, surprise very clearly visible all over his face. How much had Spike shared with them? Willow smiled at him, and he wondered where the trembling girl he remembered had gone, the one who'd tripped all over herself if he'd so much as looked wrong at her. While he was aware that she'd seen some pretty awful things, he wasn't sure how it had transformed her into this serene wise woman that was sitting in front of him. “Willow?” he asked hesitantly.

“Spike was never too shy about it,” she replied, answering his unspoken question. “He used to say that if any of us were 'too dainty to stand it', then we could be the ones to leave the room instead of him.” She chuckled at the memory of the blond vampire lounging on Giles' couch, booted feet up on the coffee table despite the Watcher's obvious distaste, yelling at the TV and trading jabs with Xander in between careful sips of his blood. “Buffy used to get so mad at him for it, especially when she had Dawn with her, but he didn't seem to care. Sometimes I think he used to wait to eat until she got there, just because he liked to piss her off.”

“Yeah, he was always good at that.” Angel smiled, remembering the delight that Spike had taken in ticking him off as well. Souled or unsouled, it hadn't seemed to make any difference- the game was all about pushing buttons and seeing how long it would take for Angel to completely lose it and start screaming. Of course, before he'd gotten his soul, the screaming was usually accompanied by beatings and rapes...

He winced as his mind conjured up the image of a bleeding, bruised, and broken boy, an all too common sight during those first years. “I didn't handle it well,” he said softly. “I never really knew how to deal with him, what to say or how to get him to just... behave. He was just so reckless and disobedient- all I ever wanted was for him to listen to me, so I could keep him safe.”

Of course, Spike hadn't been safe, had he? He'd been abandoned by his sire, captured, tortured, and hunted by soldiers, had to crawl to his enemy and beg her for help, and that was all before he'd gone to seek his soul. “Why didn't he ever come to me?” Angel found himself asking. “I would've-” He wanted to say 'helped him', but the words wouldn't seem to come out. Deep down he knew it wasn't true; he would have either staked him or thrown him out, convinced that Spike could never change.

“I don't know. But sometimes it's- it's hard to face people you care about when you've done... terrible things,” Willow murmured, looking down at the floor between them. “You know that in their eyes you're the same person you've always been, no matter how much what you've done has changed you. Maybe... maybe Spike felt like he was always gonna be a fledgling as far as you were concerned, and with the soul, well...” She shrugged. “You'd probably have to ask Buffy about a lot of this, because she spent more time with him than most of us.”

He nodded slowly. “Maybe I will.” He hadn't talked to the Slayer about her time with his childe much, but it was obvious that she was suffering over his loss.

Willow smiled. “I think you should.” She reached out to take his hand again, giving it a gentle squeeze as she rose. “Would you like more blood?” He shook his head, and she turned back to the candle, retrieving a black book from its stand. A red ribbon marked the page she opened to, and he waited for her to hand it to him, but she just looked down at it, then said, “I know you're not Jewish, and Spike was about as far from religious as you could get, but would you mind if I recited the kaddish for him?”

It took a moment to get the word past the lump in his throat, but he managed to say, “Please.” She bowed her head and began to read, the soft tones of the prayer wrapping around them, filling the room with the ancient words of loss and comfort. Angel couldn't understand the words, but he knew the feeling, and as he listened to her voice rise and fall in the chant, he felt the tightness in his chest begin to ease.

When she was finished, Willow closed the book and put it back on the stand, then quietly slipped away, leaving Angel with the words of the kaddish still ringing in his ears and the memory of Spike's smile dancing before his eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

The first full day of shiva passed slowly. Nobody came to talk to him, but he supposed that was for the best. He wasn't exactly ready for company just yet, not when he was still struggling to accept that Spike was really gone. It just felt wrong- despite dying over a hundred years ago, the blond had been the most alive person Angel had ever known. He hadn't appreciated his zest for life properly, had beaten him again and again for it, always counseling him to greater caution, never understanding the wild joy that had driven his boy out to seek the best fights he could find.

Even the threat of the Slayer, one of the harshest any sire could throw at his childe that didn't involve casting him out of the family, had failed to properly frighten him. Any other fledgling would've mended his ways immediately upon hearing of a supernatural hunter that killed vampires. But not Spike. No, his boy had set out to track the girl down and discover the truth of her nature for himself. And even after he'd seen that, after he'd watched her kill again and again in China, he hadn't been happy until he'd tested her, pitted himself against her in a fight that he'd survived through sheer dumb luck.

The memory of Spike's bloody face and ear-splitting grin sent a cold shiver through him as he realized once again that he could've lost his childe that night. It had been one of the first things that he'd thought about when he first heard that they'd fought, his pride in the feat warring with the desire to shake Spike and scream at him for foolishly risking his life like that, all of it tainted by the way the soul had cringed away from the fresh blood spattered all over him. He'd always been grateful that he'd run away from them, because he didn't think even the screams of his soul would've kept him away from Spike if they'd still been together by morning. He would've licked him clean, sunk fangs and cock deep inside him and shared in the Slayer's death the way Spike had expected him to from the first, and he wouldn't have cared about how damned it made him...

“Hey.” He started at the faint sound, looking up, surprised to see Buffy leaning against his doorway. “Mind if I come in?”

She didn't wait for a reply, but walked over to the cushions that were spread out on the floor, but she didn't sit down right away. Instead, she turned towards the refrigerator and set about preparing a cup of blood, her easy, economical movements telling him more clearly than words how familiar she was with this routine. This quiet, sad Slayer who was quite comfortable making blood for a vampire was so far removed from the bouncy, bubbly teenager he'd known that he wondered if he'd have even recognized her if he hadn't already known who she was. That girl had always wrinkled up her nose at any mention of his vampiric state- he couldn't even begin to imagine her dealing with the needs of a vampire, let alone tend to them with this sort of solemn dignity. But telling her any of this would just add to her pain, so he took the blood from her with a silent nod of thanks, and sipped it slowly while she made herself comfortable on the floor.

Angel studied her while he drank, mentally cataloguing the changes that the years had brought about in her. She wore her hair loose now, longer than he'd ever seen it before, and he wondered if that was due in any part to Spike. When they'd been dating, she'd often swept it up into buns and fancy little dos, maybe to please him, or maybe just to appear a little more sophisticated, but he had to admit that this new style, so much simpler and straightforward, suited her better. Her eyes were puffy and red around the edges, and there was a sorrow in their depths that he knew all too well, the kind of pain that only real love and loss could put there. She was still as beautiful as ever, but there was a new quiet that had settled over her, a graceful sense of gravity that he'd never seen before, although he couldn't tell if it was a result of the recent battle and her responsibility as the leader of the Slayer army, or it was something older, something that had come about through the various ups and downs of life. With some surprise, Angel realized that, somewhere between burning down the high school and closing the Hellmouth, Buffy had grown up.

Once he was finished, she picked the mug up and rinsed it out, wiping it out with a dishtowel before she set it down. Her calm, matter-of-fact attitude and easy motions reminded him again that she must've performed these services for his childe, and he forced the first instinctive rush of jealousy down long enough to remind himself that he'd never allowed her to see that side of him often enough to find out if she would've given him the same care. Glancing over at her, he noticed the defeated slump of her shoulders and the way her fingers lingered over the mug, as though savoring this last chance to perform what must've been a daily ritual for her. _It's always the small things we miss the most_, he thought, the words slicing through the haze of building anger to sober him as swiftly and efficiently as a slap in the face. He'd heard that somewhere, hadn't he? Read it or something, although just now he couldn't remember where.

“You miss him.” She'd just finished with the mug when he spoke, and he saw her back stiffen before she turned around, her eyes shining with unshed tears. How many had she shed for him now?

Her face crumpled briefly as she nodded, but smoothed out again before the tears could fall. “Yeah, I do. He was just such a big part of my life these last few years. It feels... weird not to have him here, like there's some part of me missing but I don't really know about it yet, you know?”

Angel thought back to those first years with his soul, when he'd felt the loss of his family like a severed limb. “Like something you needed to survive, but never realized how much until it was gone,” he said absently.

“How did you know?” He looked at the clear surprise on her features and suddenly felt very old. How was it that he'd managed to fall in love with her and yet never managed to share even a tiny piece of his past, let alone who and what he really was?

“My soul. When I left, it was like-” he shook his head, unable to find the words he needed. “I was so lost, and they were... I didn't think they would want me anymore if they knew. Darla didn't, and I figured if my sire... if she couldn't bear to look at me, then how could my- how could they?”

Buffy reached out to take his hand, twining their fingers together in a gesture that both offered and sought comfort. “For what it's worth, I think he got that,” she told him. “Maybe not then, but after his soul. He said it made a lot of things clear. We spent a lot of time talking over the last year,” she added, lips curving in a faint smile as he stared at her in open amazement.

He could hardly believe that Spike would've shared so much of his past with her. How was it that he'd felt comfortable enough to reveal himself in such detail to a Slayer? “Was he- I mean, what did you-”

“Talk about?” He nodded, wondering if she was reading his mind somehow or if he was just that predictable. “Everything. Anything. I don't know. He wouldn't tell me much at first, but after I got him off the Hellmouth, it was starting to get better. Then they took him and-” her voice caught, and paused for a second to clear her throat, “and after I got him out... we just talked. I could tell him anything, because he'd seen me at my very worst and he still loved me, so it wasn't like he was going to leave, was it?”

There was a softness to her voice, a quiet calm in her eyes that he didn't think he'd ever seen before, and his heart broke for her, although he couldn't have said whether it was because she'd lost the one she loved or because she'd been able to have him in his last days while Angel had pushed him away at every opportunity. Either way, in that second, he both loved and hated her for it. “You loved him.” The words tore free in a harsh whisper, and their effect was instantaneous. Buffy began to cry, and it wasn't soft little tears, but great wracking sobs.

“Yeah,” she gasped. “I do. And he- he didn't believe me! I tried to tell him, down there, before he- but he told me I didn't and made me leave!” Her small frame shuddered as she fought for air against the streams of tears that were blinding her. “The jerk... I hate him!”

Angel slid down out of his chair, wrapping his arms around her and drawing her close. “No, you don't,” he murmured, ignoring her plaintive cries that would've told him otherwise. “You don't. You can't. You loved him, you've gotta remember that. Remember that, Buffy. Remember...” And as he held her and did his best to help her through the wild storm of her grief, he began to realize that the words weren't for her, but for him.

He'd tried so hard to deny what he once felt for Spike, to shut him out and pretend that they'd never been anything more than deadly enemies, and somewhere along the way he'd lost sight of the tender affection and passion they'd shared. “Remember,” he choked out, barely noticing the blurring of his vision until the first salty tears slid down over his lips. “We have to... can't let him-” Then it was her turn to hold him while he cried, her hands that rubbed soothingly over his back and her voice that whispered in his ear, telling him to keep the faith and trust that Spike had known how much they both loved him.

A very long time later, after they'd both managed to stop crying, Angel hugged her and let her go, this time for good. He went to bed, where for the first time in two weeks, he dreamt not of fire and mocking tones of laughter that echoed off of crumbling hallways but of dark rooms with silken skin laid out over cool sheets. When he woke, Willow was there with a mug of blood to start the day. He drank it while she recited the kaddish, then sat back in the low chair and closed his eyes, thinking about his dreams- about William.

He'd been about as far from a proper vampire as it was possible to get, and that first week of his new life had been more precarious than he knew, as Angelus had found himself tempted to stake the fumbling fledgling for numerous offenses. His unreasonable rage knew no bounds until Drusilla drifted into his room one night and announced that she was giving her 'new dolly' to him because, “He'll wriggle and fight under you, Daddy, and that makes him so much more fun for you to hurt.”

Had she seen it then, what they were to be to each other, or was everything that followed the result of Drusilla's faerie visions and ramblings? Strange, to think that years of bloody possession, of lust and need and anger and struggle could have been the result of his mad childe's wild delusion. He wondered what might have happened if Drusilla hadn't been so driven to please him, if she'd held onto the fledgling she'd created instead of presenting him to her sire on a silver platter, and knew that, if he were honest, he'd have to admit that Dru had likely spared William years of pain with her action. Angelus had desired the boy almost as soon as he'd seen him, but there was no way he would've admitted wanting a man in such a way, not when he'd beat Penn half to death for daring to crawl into his bed one night. Over time, the desire would've driven him to strike out at its cause, and William would've borne the brunt of his frustrated longing, but this way, when the lad was a gift presented with such tender care... he hadn't even been able to think of turning him down.

The light tap at the door tugged him back to the present, and when he called out, “Come in,” the slender figure that slipped inside seemed for a second like a ghost come to life. The hair was darker and much longer, but the lithe grace and blue eyes... “Dawn,” he rasped, when he was finally able to shove the image of the young vampire aside long enough to focus on the girl in the doorway. “Come sit down.”

She gave him an oddly shy smile and hurried towards the cushions, all coltish grace and long limbs as she settled down. “I can come back if it's a bad time,” she started. “I just wanted to come in and-”

“No, it's okay,” he assured her. “I was just thinking about-”

“About Spike?”

He shook his head. “William, actually.” She clearly didn't understand, so he explained. “When he first came to us, after Dru turned him, he wasn't Spike yet. He was... different.”

“Different how?” God, that question could break his heart, especially since he knew the next thing she'd ask. She'd want to know why he changed, and there was no way to hide his part in that transformation. How could he tell this beautiful young woman about the things he'd done, the ways he'd twisted and mangled the gentle poet until he'd been driven to recreate himself as the badass demon she'd known?

He could lie, tell her that he'd risen from his grave a killer, but something about the way she looked up at him, so sweet and trusting, made him say instead, “He wasn't like any vampire I've ever known. He didn't care about killing at first, really just went out to feed when he needed to, and even then he cared more about Drusilla than I- than Angelus wanted him to.”

“You know, it's okay to say that it was you,” she said quietly. “Spike used to tell me stories about when he was evil, and he told me what it was like.”

That was unexpected. “He did? What did he say?”

“He said it was who he used to be, but not who he was anymore.” She hesitated, biting her lip in a way that looked very much like her sister, before she added, “He said that if you ever learned to accept that and just be who you were, you could actually be happy without losing your soul, but that you'd never allow yourself to do that because you felt like being miserable was what you deserved.”

Angel stared at her, thunderstruck by this revelation. He'd never thought that Spike might have considered his situation, let alone that he would've told someone else his conclusions. “I don't- He said that?”

Dawn nodded. “Usually with a lot more 'ponce's and 'berk's thrown in, but yeah. We talked a lot when Buffy was gone and he said-” her voice caught and she cleared her throat, tears glistening in her eyes- “he said that I had to learn to enjoy the time I had left because otherwise I wasn't honoring what she'd done.” She paused for a few second, and he saw the first tears fall down her cheeks. “I tried to tell Buffy about it after we left Sunnydale, but she wouldn't let me finish. She won't talk about him anymore, and it's-”

“It's like he wasn't ever here, is that it?” he asked softly. She nodded, a sob breaking free, and Angel opened his arms to her. It was what his boy would've wanted, probably what Spike himself would've done if he were there, and as Dawn crawled up into his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck, and cried openly against his neck, Angel could almost feel Spike standing over them. He rubbed her back, whispered soothing words in her ears about how much Spike had cared about her, and felt the first shattered pieces of his heart knit themselves back together when she hugged him in return.


End file.
